


Ferris Wheel

by destronomics



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-31
Updated: 2011-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:03:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not escaping Lisa, is all, what Dean is trying to do, his masterclass in leaving the smallest possible footprint in someone else’s life. (6x01)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ferris Wheel

At first, Dean mostly tries to stay out of the way. It’s easier with Ben in school, but on the weekends he keeps his door closed during the day, takes long and longer walks when night settles in and Ben is allowed to stay up, because that usually means Ben wants to hang with Dean and that means Ben wanting to ask him things, and that means going to Dean for help on his homework or wanting to tell Dean about his day. That means talking with Dean. A lot.

When Ben first started doing this, Dean couldn’t really make eye contact with him, looking at Lisa over his head instead, like he needed permission to interact with Ben. Lisa gets it, she does, but. Ben likes him. Lisa likes him. It’s okay. She tells him that. “Ben’s not stupid.”

“I know that.” Dean says, but he’s also sighing, like she’s still not getting it, “I know kids aren’t stupid, but I--”

“He knows you’re hurting. He’s just trying to help.”

“That isn’t his job.” Dean’s voice goes hard when he says this but Lisa’s face must be showing something he recognizes, even if she doesn’t have a word for what spikes through her chest just then. He apologizes, “Jesus, I’m sorry,” keeps apologizing, even as he escapes to the guest bedroom.

She sits on the couch for awhile, staring at the TV that’s not even on and when she catches that she’s doing this, a half hour later, she feels a little silly. It’s not like she’s in a position to feel slighted, but it hits like it anyway.

It’s not escaping Lisa, is all, what Dean is trying to do, his masterclass in leaving the smallest possible footprint in someone else’s life.

Sometime in the morning when she doesn’t have to be up yet, she hears his car start up outside. In the real morning, the one where Lisa has to be awake, Dean’s door is still closed but she’s got the feeling he’s not behind it. The paper is gone from the front stoop, and Ben complains about missing _Foxtrot_. “You can read it on the computer when you get back from school,” Lisa tells him, and packs the both of them into the car.

When she comes back from work, Dean’s sitting on the stoop, newspaper neatly folded in his hands. He’s not meeting her eyes. That part, at least, is not new. “I didn’t. I didn’t have a key.”

Lisa doesn’t tell him that she knows he could break into the house at anytime, that she knows he knows where she keeps the spare under the third rock from the left of the back door in the yard. She doesn’t tell him that she knows that she gave him a spare that first week, when it looked like he was going to run and finish the job of whatever brought him to her doorstop in the first place, because oh god. She’s not going to tell him any of that, because she’s not having that on her conscience, because she can’t. She just can’t.

She nods, carefully, and makes her way around him to unlock the door. Holds it open for him and waits for him to duck inside.

Later, when Ben raids the paper for the comics to read with his dinner, she looks at the classifieds section, sees the prices. It’s not hard to figure out, with the life Dean looks like he led, just how much he doesn’t have.

She asks him to stay. It might not be the best decision for either of them, but the thought of Dean in the place he can afford, doing whatever he does in the day when she’s at work--

It sits worse with her.

She doesn’t ask him about it, doesn’t want to push, doesn’t think, really, she wants to know. But even when his eyes lose the pinkish watery look about a week in, and when he offers to start looking for a place of his own, she asks him to stay. Not because she thinks anything should happen, or will, but. But.

He might not look like he’s crying himself hoarse every night anymore, but she’s not stupid: she can still recognize that too long pause after wishing him good night through the door, recognize that sort of swallow and careful measuring of breath before answering.

Eventually they fall into certain habits anyway. Habits like mowing her lawn, habits like fixing the garbage disposal and the plumbing when it goes a little wonky. Nothing she can’t easily get someone else to handle, but it seems to do Dean some good, gives him something to do other than sit in his room and think. Or drink.

Dean does that a lot too.

The thing she didn’t expect was Dean and food. Dean and waking up to the smell of pancakes and eggs and milk in a pitcher on the table. Dean packing lunch for Ben, Dean making dinner. He gets her in on it, which is weird enough for Lisa, even if she never really felt all that guilty raiding the Whole Foods salad bar before -- single mom, works all day, she makes good money and Ben seems to like it, why not?

But coming home and Dean's got salad and mashed potatoes and a goddamn casserole on the table? It's actually kind of... she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t want to put it a name to it. It makes the place smell nice and so she doesn't really--can’t bring herself to mind or question. She just goes with it, and grins when Dean grins whenever she tries to mimic the omelet toss and ends up painting the wall with it instead.

But whatever kind of grief that is keeping Dean that quiet also makes _The Dean and Lisa Show_ , for the most part, a nonstarter. If Dean had any expectations, he doesn’t act on them and Lisa is, truthfully, a little relieved. There are times, like when they share the couch together for some late night TV, Dean drinking in her cable like it’s something too precious to keep, when Lisa is sure he is going to do something.

Like when he turns off the TV sometimes and just sits there; when he puts his hand on her knee and braces himself for something. Like he’s going to say something. Like he’s going to do something.

Like maybe he’s just going to move the hand on her knee, up her thigh; but no, mostly he just leaves it there for what feels like forever, but is probably just a few minutes, mouth working, tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek.

Mostly it ends with him patting her knee with that hand, getting up a little unsteady and working out a goodnight before disappearing into the guest room.

It’s a little frustrating. Which is stupid. Because it shouldn’t be happening at all. He shouldn’t still be here. She needs to ask him when he plans to leave.

She’s one to talk, because he keeps pulling shit like that and she keeps not asking the thing she needs to ask and everything stays just the way it is, and maybe they both need that too.

So, nothing happens. Except for that. The hand thing, that heavy pause, like he’s torn between keeping his hand there, or leaving for good, or both. He does that a lot and Lisa doesn’t, she tells herself, really want anything to happen. But. She wonders. She’s a person, okay? She’s got her priorities, but she’s also living.

So when he does the hand thing again, after Ben’s gone to bed and it looks like he wants to say something, she figures he’s going to pull a runner again, so she doesn’t have much to lose when she presses the heel of her hand hard against the fingers on her knee before he can pull away.

He looks at her like she doesn’t know what. So she keeps her hand there, keeps the pressure, leans in, and waits for him to come up with an excuse, gives him the moment to find one. When he doesn’t say anything, she kisses him. Just a press of lips at first, just holding him there.

This is the moment that Lisa thinks this is it. This is when Dean leaves and doesn’t come back, where he isn’t going to be waiting on her stoop the next morning, inarticulate and already tired.

But then he’s opening his mouth, hot, and the hand on her knee is shaking hers off and moving up her thigh until he’s surging forward: chest pressing almost painfully against her breasts, until his mouth is on hers, slow, slick nips at her tongue, her lips. Moving down until he’s at the tendon of her neck, pulled tight, until he’s at the crease right behind her jaw, near her ear, and then the sound of him is everywhere: wet and loud and warm.

She almost wants to laugh, from terror because this is a stupid idea, or from relief because this is at least something she understands; she doesn’t know, maybe it’s both.

She brings her hands to his waist, digs into the fabric there. He’s got her almost covered now and she has to scramble to try and pull the cloth up over his head even as he makes it difficult with his mouth at her neck; teeth skimming along, her shoulder, nipping at the hem of her shirt just above her bra.

They get a little tangled but by the time the fact that this is probably a bad, bad idea settles in his shirt’s unbuttoned to his waist and hers is finally off. Dean’s managed to get her pants and underwear tangled at the knees and the friction is insane where her skin is trapped between the cloth and Dean pressing up against her. It’s hard not to feel everything.

She tries for a steadying hand on Dean’s shoulder, but his mouth is worrying the skin of her hip, sharp pinpricks of teeth at her inner thigh; the folds of her pussy; his tongue gets to her clit with a deep, long lick that makes her hand skip from shoulder to neck. She tries to seek purchase in his hair but all she can manage are short, staccato pulls at the base of his neck. It’s another, and another, each roll of his tongue rough and too much until, “Jesus _Christ_ , Dean.” Another swipe of tongue and teeth and all Lisa feels is something jerk tight in her gut.

They both hit the floor, hard.

Maybe it’s been a few months, okay, since Lisa’s seen the better half of getting any sort of laid, and maybe she’s a little sensitive, but Dean makes an excellent landing pad, and she’s going to tell him that, when she finds her breath again, she’ll thank him nicely and--

And then he’s giggling helplessly into her stomach. She tries for a half-hearted “I’m ticklish” but it just turns the laugh into something full bodied and too loud, and Lisa has to wrap her arms around his head to stifle them because Ben just went to sleep a few hours ago, and oh god, be quiet, “You dick, Ben’ll--”

And Dean’s not shutting up, no, because this is Lisa’s fault, okay, he bruises easy, he’s delicate, he’s old, he’s a mouthful of babble against her skin that she tries to smother with _shh_ and _shut up_ and a long list of breathless curses.

But he’s still grinning, still laughing and then he’s shaking off her arms and pulling himself up over her, elbows pressing her shoulders against the floor, keeping her in place so he can kiss her again, so Lisa figures it gets the job done.

“You’re so easy,” he mutters into her mouth, after, when half the cushions of the couch have joined them on the floor and Lisa’s second orgasm for the night is making its way out through her thighs, her calves, her toes.

She finds enough energy in her reserves to flip him the bird, but that’s about it. She’s just rediscovered muscles she hadn’t seen in years, she could be forgiven, right?

Dean’s still grinning though, and that’s something. It's got to count for something. Dean arranges the arm she's parked around his waist until he can wrap one of his hands around her fingers, and his smile has taken a turn for the sleepy. Lisa lets herself press her lips against his chest, lets herself catch her breath against his skin.

"You good?" He asks after awhile, and the angle Lisa's head is at, there's no way to tell how awake he is, what he might remember in the morning. But it's the truth. As much as she's figured out, anyway:

"I'm good."

There's a long moment where Lisa thinks he's fallen asleep, where everything is still and quiet. But then Dean nods, once, twice, and grips her fingers tighter.  



End file.
